Sunday, April 29, 2007

Here's a scene that's typical of what happened at Filmation's cartoon studio all the time.

I had just read the script for "Disco Droopy" and someone tipped me off on where the scriptwriter was hiding out. I chased him down and began to deliver God's justice upon him I beat him within an inch of his cheap lifeI felt the foul meat of his face tear off on my fistsin a flash my older wiser supervisor stopped me in my murderous rageHis knuckles connected with my skull and loosened my enraged fleshWhen my brains stopped rattling, I woke up to have the harsh modern world explained to me in the coldest meanest wordsI felt the nastiness of reality ooze over me like fish vomit coating a fresh babe

reality sunk in slowly; it produced a last rebellious and futile spasmic outcrythis is what artists face every day of their lives in the terrible icy world of animation scripts.

I'd like to make sure everyone knows that David Mackenzie (lyris) did retouching too for that restored clip, as well as doing much more to make the video quality match the rest of the cartoon as well. He's the video-master!

that clip is awesome! egad, the facial expressions are sublime. and i'm positive i like Jackie Chan better when he's jumping off the sides of buildings onto moving cars while kicking some guy in the face.

2. You're an amazing writer with an great ear for dramatic description in your depiction of getting revenge on the evil writer.

"reality sunk in slowly; it produced a last rebellious and futile spasmic outcry"

That is poetry. Man! That was soooo good!

3. It was hilarious to juxtapose a great old film noir with your story about scripts, and the clip's lack of specifics made it work even better!

4. That Ryan clip is amazing!! I've got to see this movie!

5. I finally saw Sven Hoek for the first time yesterday and was amazing at how dramatic the dialogue was, but the ANIMATION and ACTING overpowered it. I can't belive what a good cartoon that is. Ren's final monologue in that cartoon was amazing, it was genuinely threatening.

6. When that timecode scene came up I was shocked. "Why is there a VCR timer on my DVD all of a sudden? Where did the picture quality go?" Now I know why and I'm glad to hear it will be gone on the Ultimate Set. Very coincidental timing on that.

WHAT CRAP!,"gnarliest tattoo in the history of gnarl??",somebody open a window in here!This shit makes Gilligans Island look like shakespeare.those scripts must have been written by maginally retarded chimps.Stuck in that kind of cartoon hell i'm surprised you didnt kill someone!

I guess the formal way to write a script - with camera shots, dialog margins - does get in the way of some of the creativity. In a writing class I had - we where expected to draw up a script with all the correct margins and camera call-outs. And we where graded not on the content of the script - but the official, fomal "look" of the script. To see if we got all our camra angles in the right lines. Formaly - many writers where taught that they had to produce a perfect looking script. Writers of screenplays looking for jobs try to follow every formality rule there is to script writing. There is a certain way we where taught to write scripts. Because we where taught that in order to suceed - the script has to look like a formal shooting script.

You can't harp on all writers just because they are formaly doing what we where told, and believed would help us succeed and impress the Big Guys in the Entertainment Industry - such as animation. (Directors/Producers). I know some very good cartoon writers on DeviantART - who write for the Ed, Edd & Eddy on Cartoon Network. And they write just fine - and it's thier job to know how to formaly write a script. But they are still cartoonists - maybe the last of the very few good ones out there.

I guess I'm jaded cause I actually paid attention to the Script Writing class I had. It was a very good class in fact. I learned all the names of the important shots. Most of the shooting scripts are written formaly like that because it comes years of screenplay writing habits. Movies, TV, and Cartoons are all lopped together in one big catagory. If you study how to write for movies - you are expected to know all the abreviations for cameraman shots there is needed. It's almost like being able to read L33t sp34k. And it became the rule and code for all entertainment writers to write in.

If we are allowed to break out of the strain of being expected to know how to formaly write a movie script. Then maybe we will start to loosen up about how it is written. But I have found in my career searches that many studios like to see that one can formaly write a script. Just because it is the inside way on how to do things in the biz.

that r & S clip? John, amazing voice work. like, suprisingly funny, more than usual. haven't seen this episode in a couple years.

also should be pointed out, awesome voice work for ren in the adult party cartoon series. ren saying "he hit me, this man" and "he dunk me" - these lines run through my mind all the damn time. delivery! ren seemed in his best form, extra extra funny, and all round good in 'ren seeks help'

Oh wow. That Ren & Stimpy clip is absolutely amazing. That was always one of my favorite bits from the show, right up there with the Happy Helmet and History Eraser Button.

The most awesome thing about it is that Ren's anger is made hyperbolic specifically by -not- going to traditional jutting-inward eyebrows and harsh voice. Instead, his face is distorted, he shakes a lot, his animation punctuates his words in a slightly uncartoony manner (notice when he threatens to tear their arms out of their sockets, the arm motion shakes a lot but is more or less unexaggerated, while the background flashes as the moment of the tear), the backgrounds and sounds trip out, and, I think most importantly, Stimpy and Sven react with great fear. That reaction is what allows kids who might not read Ren's extreme anger to piece it together.

I've actualy seen Disco Droopy, Luckily it was in Portugese so i couldn't hear the annoying producer pretend to be droopy.I always thought you worked on that cartoon, there are some backgrounds in that cartoon with some Clampett style trippy looking characters.

There are good writers and really, really bad writers. Kali's Jackie Chan question hit to one of the roots of the problem here in my opinion - even if they did find a good writer, a good writer can't write a good script for a bad show.

Writing is an art form and a talent, just as cartooning is, just as animation is. That there are godawful writers out there (and godawful shows) does not make the endeavour totally worthless in my opinion but you got it spot-on in a previous post (or was it Uncle Eddie?) when you questioned just how into the craft animation writers actually are. I would hope there are some that do love their work and try to improve and advance as they go.

But then, I can't imagine I'd be all that enthused to put my heart and soul into Jackie Chan Adventures no matter what end of the process I had. Shows like this are exercises in marketing.

I know others have already said it, but that scene from 'Sven Hoek' is probably the most powerful pieces of animation acting I have seen, and have watched it on the DVD set countless, until I can remember every last line and expression! I particularly love the "tear your arms out" bit!

When Cartoon Network showed Droopy cartoons they would quite often sneak in the ones like Disco Droopy.

Man... even as a KID I would get so pissed when those ones came on. "Why does Droopy not sound like Droopy? Why is everything so slow? Why is this cartoon NOT FUNNY?" I would change the channel every time.

HAWHAWHAWHAWHAWHAW! What a post: terrific Robert Ryan poses, hilarious and literate dialogue (John's the best writer in the business as well as the best artist), and a restoration of one of the best Ren & Stimpy clips ever! Thanks to John and also to Lyris and Evan! This post is a keeper!

Jeez, John. Way to make a point. Take the worst animated show on TV and then use it as example of how all modern animation sucks.

Listen, all you folks, there's no reason for you to believe that nothing good (except Ren and Stimpy) has been done in the field of animation in decades. Its a rediculous premise. It's like idiots who cling to classical music as the last great aural art form. It's just not so.

BTW, the acting in that clip is lousy even by today's cartoon standards. Kevin Conroy could fart out a better performance than anyone in the pre-method days. It's like the fat one was reading the lines off the guy's face.

What in the smelly hell are you talking about with that "pre-method" stuff? What's there not to like about that performance? Great dialoge delivered with some damn vigor, hard-boiled entertainment. Just because it ain't method doesn't mean it's worthless. Not by a long shot. I mean for god's sake, there's a whole history of great actors in Hollywood who weren't method or even actively hated it. Take Orson Welles for example. One of the finest who ever lived, and wouldn't have method on his set, (felt it got in the way.) I hate it when people refer to "non-method" or "pre-method" with disdain and venom. Drives me crazy. Like saying, "This is the one true CORRECT way, forever and ever, amen." Sure good acting has, at its base, solid, unshakeable principles (which is what John is trying to teach in animation form,) but to decry everything that came before your prefered way of doing it is damned silly.

Gotta say -- the sound and music in the Sven Hoek clip is truly genius: adds to the dark and disturbing feeling, and does so much more than simply provide appropriate noises to the actions: there are so many imaginary, purely psychological sounds in there!

I kinda think you're missing the point of this post. Sure the film clip isn't the best piece of action ever. John posted it because he felt it was an example of how good performances can only come about through good material to perform.

"I've seen these same actors in movies with lesser scripts and they can't do as much with them, despite their obvious talent."

Moreover, I believe he chose to use a Jackie Chan Adventures script BECUASE it's obviously the worst possible cartoon in order to DRAW a CONTRAST between good and bad writing. He could have use d a script from say Foster's Home For Imaginary Friends, but then I bet a good 50% of the readers who do like the show would complain about John using it as an example or bad writing. Then there's be twice 20 comments complaining about how unfair John is. At least this way we can all agree because the examples are so cut and dry.

And finally, R&S definitely ain't the only "good" animation since 19XX. John'll be the first to point out everything wrong with it. However, it is the only cartoon I can think of to (or at least attempt to) employ specific acting, and it's probably got some of the best dialogue, posing, composition, drawing, and coloring of the last XX years. You know, all the stuff that John cares about most and writes about in the most detail. Yeah, it would be splendid and andy to hear all bout the stuff John likes about modern animation all the time ( and he does do that after every 1billion comments like yours), but that would hardly help us improve on the shortcomings. "Samurai Jack gets an A+ and gold star for having smooth motion and appealing colors. Hooray!"

When she got mad at us, my mom would frequently become enraged and then clasp her hands together and do the I'm composed, I'm in control smile. Out of all of us, she laughed the hardest at Ren's famous tirade.

This Droopy cartoon is one of the most dreadful animation I have ever seen. I can imagine the artists working on it had lots of fun... And there are people out there who actually think Filmation was a classic Animation studio....